a little something to believe in
by Floodtail- AKA Floody
Summary: and jade thinks that tori must be living sunlight, while she's just broken glass— ;jade/tori centric; drabbles.
1. O N E

;This is my first time trying fragmented writing, inspired from iloveyou123's works. Please don't expect too much; it is my first after all :) It might be confusing at first, but this mostly Jade agonizing over Tori. Could possibly be related to Heal.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

she thinks, maybe sunshine is—

not just mere energy but radiant from her, unique to her and her alone.

she thinks—

maybe she must be too innocent,

she can't see how jade wants to rip her apart. to see what makes her tick and what drives her on, what makes her walk and makes her talk, what makes her think and love and she thinks that

if she could just reach the light maybe she wouldn't be so dark inside, full of ashes that char and choke off her lungs—

the world is so cruel, she knows and wonders at it, it's like a puzzle that won't fit and she,

she thinks that the world is maybe, just maybe,

slackening its grip, just for tori because she's sunlight and—

who could kill sunlight, jade wonders;

it's just so damn _pure_ but tori's never noticed her anyways—

tori asks, _why do you hate me?_

and jade says, _maybe i don't—_

And jade sees the sun light up her face, inside out;

she remembers papers torn into scraps and blown away by the wind like crinkled snow, black scrawled ugly letters,

slashes of blood across the back of a wrist, red lines, _score one_ for so much pain, _score two_ for giving up, she brushes the purple blue black bruises like a canvas of sick color spread across pale snow—

jade touches the scars and feels beautiful pain like

ashes and ice, cold and dead with no fire, bitterly frigid and she fears that tori could melt her into nothing, she sinks her hands in tighter to draw blood just so she doesn't have to let go—

it's better to hurt yourself, she thinks, than to hurt one you love, the scars on her arms are just an old story that she's tired of reading every day, same chapters fall into play and she's sick of these words.

No one ever loves someone like you, her father says, screaming at her, red faced like blood running down her arms, you're made of ice, jade—

shut up, she says, i know it's true—

tori's sun will never shine its light upon her, these screams are getting louder as they become quieter and she hopes that hell isn't cold because she's been ice for _so so so_ long—

jade thinks if she was a script, her paper would be gray and torn, the words jagged and harsh, scrawled in a language no one can understand but speaking of things given up

she thinks that paper is so easily ruined but sun can dry it out and she thinks tori may be her cure, and she hates that; hates that she can love her so easily, things shouldn't be this simple—

she shouldn't love tori vega but it's hard and jade's never been strong, she's only falling further and she pictures angels

plummeting with their wings all broken and black feathers spiraling down in a comatose catastrophe of death and darkness— that's the only

angel that she'll ever be but tori will soar with the best of them—

that kills jade, knowing they'll always be separated by black and white because what's broken and what's not don't mix well—

tori tells her, _jade, you're made of glass. who picked you up,_

_and then broke you like this?_

jade answers her, eyes streaming black makeup like poisoned tears, she says, _the world did; it's a cruel place and_

_i don't want you to get hurt like me— _

tori's shines brighter and she tells jade not to worry because she isn't made of glass, and jade remembers of course

tori is made of sunlight and nobody can break that.

jade says, _make it shine, vega, because we need some light before we're consumed by everything else dark—_

tori takes her hand tight and smiles and says _i'll never stop shining for you, i'm the light in your darkness. _

_;finish;_


	2. T W O

she's tempted by foreign curiosity and love—

she knows love now is a terrible thing, glorified by the odd cases that came out right but

she knows that love isn't scripted like movies because hearts break and people screw up but then she sees jade, and forgets it all

green pools swimming in blue sky and she is drowning in their depths—

black waterfalls of hair threaded with a rainbow and she wonders if jade knows the storm she's causing to tori's soul or how she's got tori's heart in her grip

she can break it by the slightest twitch and that terrifies her because she's tired of pain—

jade is dangerous and tori's always been told not to play with fire because—

the risk of getting burned is too great, they say, you'll only end up hurt because she's not kind, she's a heartbreaker and she's broken like glass.

tori knows this is walking on broken glass but the pain feels good, because it means at least she can _feel;_

_jade is not like us, _beck said once, _something screwed her up and she can't back up because she's falling into hell— _

tori just wants to haul her back up but that's impossible because jade is ice and you can't touch it without being hurt-

jade told her once that she was pretty and that was something that sent her plummeting upward, because the ice had finally gleamed to show warmth beneath, and now jade was snow—

but snow is still dangerous and she loses her footing so easily when it comes to her;

tori is sun though and sun melts snow into nothing but nothing is boring and—

she wants to read the script that is jade west, the dialogue, the margins, the scrawled words and creases and folds— wants to memorize every little detail and store it more safely than diamonds and gold. she knows a good book when she sees one and jade is a thriller of a story—

jade is a book that is to be read and reread and cherished;

pages flipping in a high wind, jade looks at her and says, _i hate you because i love you,_

_you melted my ice and i was safe there, i'm putting my heart in your hands. it's a fragile thing and you can't break it— _

she's walking among the green forests of jade's eyes, the leaves that rustle in the song of the wind and the darkness behind each fragment of light, and the glass isn't glass now, it's the feathers of an angel—

they're blackened and charred and choked with ash because jade played with fire and got burned in the end, ebony feathers that crumble at her touch.

she wonders when she fell for jade and if she's just a falling angel too, maybe tori is on fire and she can't feel the pain because _it's so damn good—_

now they're together in the dark and maybe it's all _wrong_, but with jade's hand in hers she knows its _right__—_

she knows they can fly even with broken wings. 

_;finish;_


	3. T H R E E

jade pushes her away and shakes her head

scars like traces of hatred dance across the pale snow flesh of her arms and she can't think straight because her thoughts drown her in a torturing chorus;

says, _i can't, tori, the memories are too strong— _

_they came back, bit me in the ass and teeth sink so deep only because i'm too weak; i can't hold pain at bay forever— _

_tori, i can't, because all my love has been burnt to nothing, _she thinks of charred ashes crushed to black powder in her fingers, staining them poisonously like her thoughts ink her mind every day and every day and every night—_and i'd only hurt you— _

tori wants to wail, to tell her, _you can't hurt me, jade, i love you and— _

_and i love you, that should be enough, isn't it enough? _

she turns her head—

eyes are pools of blackness and her wings are broken to dust, feathers swirling like a storm that blinds her from the sun and tori remembers how everything turns to dust in the end— humans aren't perfect and all we can do is hurt each other in repay for our love;

tori holds her close and whispers in her ear like soft air

_you underestimate my strength. i am sunlight and you are darkness and we are an eclipse, jade west, a rare thing— _

_you can't throw away something so valuable._

for the first time jade thinks maybe her scars aren't too deep, thinks poison can be drawn out with the right antidote and the antidote to hatred and trauma and greed; darkness, is sunlight and sunlight and warmth, all of tori's love;

she coughs and her hair shimmers like waves of oil and her eyes are hopeful when she raises her head—

jade thinks of the sun before it bleeds out over the ocean, scrawled across the sky in gold and red and saffron and colors of warmth and that is what tori is;

the darkness might consume them in the end but hell, they might as well get some happiness from it and the sun is as good as anything at keeping them warm through the night.

it's a story written in the pale lines scored down jade's wrist and the shadows in her eyes and in the splash of gold through tori's eyes and she knows it's a tale that lives in a half-mended heart and a resolve that's stronger than anything.

she hopes that this is the only lifetime she has because she'd hate to be like a cat and have to do it over again and she hopes heaven is where they can meet, hopes heaven is where tori can soar on wings of white feathers—

because jade's wings are crumbling, black, dead, and she wants tori to be strong enough to fly for them both.

_i love you. _the words escape, tumbling and running like mice, wiggling and piercing and echoing the broken silence of a shared moment, _i love you so much it hurts and it's good, because now i know i can feel— _

_i love you more than three words could say. _

_Do you love me, tori?_

_yes jade, i love you more than i could even express— _

jade doubts it though.

no one has ever loved her without scarring her further—

and that's all the ash is, covering up the raised story-lines of old enemies,

pale raised skin marked over ready for carving, she's just something to play with and break, they always said that glass was pretty but useless and so is she and broken glass can hardly be fixed—

jade remembers notes flying through a window with slopes and curves and scrawls of handwriting and the words spoke a language she couldn't understand

the language of hell was all that spoke to her instead;

she remembers screams and bruises that flower across her skin like dying life, blood running

unseen under flesh like paintbrushes across her chest—

harsh hands that throw against the wall and she screams for help, high cries like a deathly chorus in the night with black and silver threads of stars spiraling across dark velvet—

knives of pain stabbed

over

and

over and over

into her like she did something wrong but all she ever did was screw up and plunge from the high into

what was worse instead,

exposed ribs open like prison bars, bloodied and bleached and torn open to reveal a dead heart—

she's always been one for violence but this time it looks like the sunlight has caught her where she shouldn't be—

maybe tori could love her but jade knows walking over broken glass only causes bloody feet and a red path.


	4. F O U R

_hi guys, _

_Please don't relate these to 'heal.' this is more of an 'alternate universe' and disjointed rambles; there is no storyline here. think of each chapter as an individual story and review it as so :) thank you !_

_oOoOoOoOoOo_

lines—

pale and white and writhing like inked pure words, parallel lines slashes across the back of a wrist by a razor, veins split open in cherry streams like berries of flecked bright life, tracks of bloody snow—

she thinks that she can't stop blood from seeping out. through her pores and skin it flows, welling under closed fingers in crimson flowers and dripping in scarlet rain because she cuts her pain into her skin in thin precise lines like a beautifully horrible story—

maybe if she scars too deep she'll become so distorted she'll die and she wants nothing more than for this pain to go away, but tori's only causing more while she causes less—

jade hates paradoxes.

she also hates the sun.

so by that argument she should hate tori but she doesn't and she hates that she doesn't hate her—

loathing,

despising,

don't equal love. but in this equation they somehow do—

math has always confused her though so maybe it adds up?

jade draws a piercing knife across her wrist and sees the story tracked in red under the silver blade telling of beautifully awful words;

tori sees the old scars and the new lines of blood, and she tells her _stop jade, stop doing this to yourself, please, because i can't stand seeing your pain— _

jade wants to tell her that she has to etch agony into herself with a knife because she wrings her pain out that way and it drains away with the blood, wrought in greed like a deformed garment. jade wants to tell her that these scars form a reminder not to be _weak_, that by taking her own blood she's writing on herself in a twisted tale. the cuts are the misery that she craves and she can't stop plummeting because her wings are broken, shattered, _burned_—

tori says _i'll fly for us both _but jade knows she is too heavy and she never wants to bring tori down into her personal hell because sunlight doesn't belong in such darkness—

she doesn't want to hurt tori,

because she _loves_ her.

and that terrifies her more than her descent into shattered glass does because

she can't hurt tori and she just can't she doesn't want to but she is because her scars are melding into tori's unscathed soul—

she mustn't mustn't _mustn't_ hurt tori or everything will fall apart.

but she knows it's already hanging by a fraying thread and she loves to tease the spiraling rope with the edge of a knife—

_;finish;_


	5. F I V E

he tells you he won't hurt you and he didn't ever _mean_ to, but it just happened, and you look up at the night sky.

you think you're like a star, not a famous one but a real star shining up there in the sky;

cause you're on fire, painful agony that melts you alive and you can see everything happen but you're too far away to do anything about it—

beck says he loves you, misses you and you want to tell him to _fuck off_, because

you love someone else, but beck always was a sedative to the wounds and tori's only salt;

but salt heals. it hurts but it heals, but beck takes away the pain while making it worse and you wonder how to choose such a choice, that's just not fair—

_life's never been fair,_ beck would say, _and it never will be, y'know._

_i'll make it fair_, tori would say, _because you deserve that._

you wonder how vega became such a part of you that you'd crumble if she ever left. she's the words etched into your soul and the soundtrack in your dreams, and god it's a wonderfully painful set of songs—

the demons come out to play in your head every night and you scream silently at them to stop killing you from the inside out and you wonder why life pulled the rug out from under your feet, why is it _you?_—

now you're falling into a bottomless pit with no light to guide you and broken wings to mock you.

snow is falling and night is calling but you haven't the strength to pick up the phone_ just_ yet;

isn't it better to just stay asleep in this cradle of monsters than to wake up and face the sun. you're _tired _of pain.

you're lost in a hurricane of darkness and the wind is slowly tearing you to shreds, laughing as blood spatters the sky.

your past hides within the cracks in your heart and the shadows in your veins and the memories storm rampant in your head like an elaborate torture plan—

ashes fall like rain, sifting, crumbling between pale silver fingers. no flame flickers among this gray powder any longer because the coldness of life snuffed it out, and you feel tears stream down like flooded rivers, wet and full of shards of_ you._

_they speak, she speaks, say, says— _

"_i love you, jade."_

and jade summons up the courage to say it back.

"_i love you too— _

_tori."_

another feather on her wings stitches back together and that's just _enough_ to begin flying again, with tori helping her see out of the darkness.

the future may be bright and she allows herself to think it for the first time.


	6. S I X

says that you have thirty seconds and they start now—

you work frantically to unlock her heart but she dangles the key just out of reach while laughing at your struggles, tori thinks jade can't help hurting others because she lashes out like a coil held too tight for too long;

she wants you to heal her, or she'll fall apart, but she won't give you the bandages for the wounds so how can you do this? she's crumbling before your very eyes—

sun only burns what's been in the dark for so long and jade—

she's been swimming (no, _drowning_) in a pool of shadows forever, she thinks, if she could maybe once, just once, pull jade up from the darkness then maybe she wouldn't be so _convinced _of tori's failure, but all she seems to do is throw up brick walls—

then how can she be mad, if tori climbs them?

she loved something that had a broken love-meter, jade tries so hard but—

how do you feel something right, if you haven't before?

she says it's not her fault but why does jade stab her straight to the core?

how do you follow a path with no map and expect not to have any bumps in the road, she'd cry out in agony as the cars drove over her.

_i love you, _tori would say, she'd carve into her heart with bloody letters and feelings pouring from open wounds—

_don't. _

_but i do— _

_you can't._

tori will try not to love jade but she hasn't ever been strong, and the black hair and blue eyes are home to her—

so cold.

this house no longer feels like a home, jade would say, mouth a crooked line, a shattered crack on her face, as words fell like raindrops. you're all i've got left.

raindrops are saltless tears, like He is crying for the world of so much pain—

sadness tastes like when you touch a teardrop and watch the crystal drop roll down pale flesh, tori thinks, knows. tears are a lot like blood, so much so— salt and liquid and birthed from pain.

sometimes the weight of the world slams on her shoulders and she's crushed, boulders and thousands of pounds of pressure weighing on her chest as she bows forward, broken eyes and slumped shoulders.

the world takes you up and considers you like a canvas,

will it add a line of worry every day, or leave you blank and whole? plain or beautiful, scarred and broken or lucky and lied to?

will it paint an awful picture on you or will it grace you with a beautiful story?

jade was taken and drawn elaborately, with an alley of shadows and a splattering of stars—

drops of blood and the lines of old scars. lines of hate and fear and the darkness of shame, but streaked with just enough light to confuse you—

tori's canvas is just golden paint with darker stripes, even the brightest people, even sunshine, possess some darkness.

tori wants to take jade apart and then maybe she could fix her— stitch up her broken heart, sew back together her torn mouth from so many words of hate, color over the bruises and silver scars and wash away all the pain. but jade is only a person and only a person can handle so much—

how long before she's irreparable?

_;finish;_


	7. S E V E N

tori wraps her arms round jade's neck and whispers in her ear, says—

_i love you. _

jade draws away to see tori's beauty, she loves her too but how to say it without saying those words? she said them once, twice, doesn't want to get broken thrice—

beck said that he misses you today.

what to say to that? that was _never_ part of the rules, an unprecedented part of the game— you just stood there while he waited for an answer but your mouth was made of stone, you were made of dust and ashes that built up and choked off your lungs, killing the breath, and your words did not exist in that dry barrenness—

you ran.

beck only supported, was a pillar and a beam to your crumbling structure built on lies and hatred, he seamed together the scars while they rotted underneath, corroding and eating away until,

nothing left.

tori was the pottering architect that found the flaws and patched them together, she ripped out the lies while you cried in pain only to realize that it was good because she took away the source of hurt, she hurt you while you healed and you realized.

some pain is good.

so you told her and watery sunlight poured down to melt away the stone until you were alive again.

beck tells you, _it's sick, it's wrong._

_why the fuck is it wrong?_

_because, jesus, jade, you're both girls and i thought you hated her— _

_so now you're as prejudiced as all of them?_ you'd said angrily. _all you ever were was— _

_i was never yours._ his mouth is a hard stern line, a crack in the wall, black and angry. _you froze me up when i touched you but now, you let tori in?_

_tori's the sun,_ you say, _she melted me, i did not let her in. beck, you were stone. we supported each other but— _

_i wasn't enough,_ he says angrily, _i got that. _

he runs.

you're left picking up the pieces he left behind. tori climbed the walls, but beck obliterated them, and left you standing bleeding on the rubble, the victory cry dying in your throat as you saw the dead bodies, all over—

blood runs down stone, red tracks striping down silver, like the tears that course— salty rivers— down your face.

tori hurts and beck feels good but—

tori heals and beck makes it worse.

she can't—

can't

can't

_can't_

see past the fields of bodies from her war, and maybe—

the death toll was too high on this battle…

victory came but was the price too much to pay?

_;finish;_


	8. E I G H T

;finish;

her nails carve into her skin, little half moons on a speckled bronze night, she wonders—

when it happened, like some fucking timer, was it? she can remember seeing her there, brown hair lengths down her back, pink threaded through like candy. she sees cat, spinning beside like she's high, her mouth pursed with candy lips, but jade stood beside all dark and charismatic and she—

she wasn't ever sweet.

the equation fits, wait, no it doesn't because—

fear + hate shouldn't = love, but they do, they do. tori wrings her hands, thinks she can get jade off of them, out of her skin, memories wrought in. like she's something soaked in, deep lines snaking across her, she reads jade jade jade on the lines of her palms—

she skittered away like a mouse, and jade was the cat.

no, a tiger, ferocious and skilled, claws extended and bloody, black gashes over the night. tori's heart is hooked on those claws, bleeding and caught, jade stares in fascination at the pain she inflicts among blue veins like a crooning song, blood painting scarlet flowers across soft pale skin, smearing red splashes—

"i can't stand being around you," she lets her know, words slipping from prison bars, the white walls of teeth, past her tongue and lips and teeth, singing a song in the still air—

jade's eyes flash blue, no, green. they're ice and it chills tori down, winter's come early—

"why's that, vega?"

tori can't let her know, stutters, words racing through her mind—

_because i love you. _

she smiles instead, upward, an arrow pointing at the sky as she fakes a smile. "you don't have to be so mean—"

_you do, you do. _

_maybe then i'll stop loving you. _

i love you, jade, but you don't love me—

"it hurts, doesn't it?"

tori looks at jade, her eyes are clear in the night as she grins at you, fangs flashing for the kill, "what hurts, vega?"

tori's breath catches, tearing her lungs apart, blood dripping through her heart. she looks away, remembers—

_don't love something you can't have, tori,_ her mother always said, eyes golden suns._ it'll only hurt you._

;finish;


	9. N I N E

she feels like there are words—

writhing underneath snowy flesh, bubbling up behind closed pale lips, aching and begging to be let out, words that—

would say what she really thought.

the show is a great act, everyone loves it, believes it, but it's only a show—

not real, not true. she's not this rehearsed in reality and she falls and stumbles and messes up her lines so often, because her real words fumble out—

the guards at the gate of the walls she's built up fight back the words— slay them down, blood filling her castle as the sentences and anger and resentment is left to die inside until it just becomes cold dead bodies.

the words die inside.

she takes a deep breath with her hand poised over her heart, eyes probing the darkness as she searches— (no, calls,) for her sunlight, for tori.

word words words—

aching and dying inside.

say what you want to say but don't say it at all—

is she half dead already-? is it true, is it not? what is wrong, what is right?

what is darkness, what is light?

what is jade, who is tori?

she doesn't know.

tori laughs and spins, long threads of chestnut hair in an autumn wind, she's the season of fall, how fitting, jade thinks. cause i'm falling too—

"don't touch me, vega—"

"you know you love me, jade," tori laughs. her words are in play, but

_it's true, i do. _

puzzles aren't very fun to figure out if you haven't all the right pieces, because these puzzles are cracked, fraying, broken—

not

_fitting._

these words never did fit to the grand puzzle of things—

_;finish;_


End file.
